Rincewind wrote:Actually, all things considered, I would consider them the GOOD boys of the SLN!

Nice to see them back, though.

No, those would be the boys investigating the MAlign penetration into the SLN. Forgot the names but the quartet of Intel and police.

Actually, technically speaking, since they are willingly serving a polity that oppresses & pillages helpless populations & they are well aware that it does not even pay lip service to the constitution of said polity I would not consider Al Fanudahi & his compatriots the good guys. They are well aware of the abuses of the Solarian League & the SLN yet they were quite happy to go along with them; (They're interest is in exposing & stopping the conspiracy to overthrow the Solarian League NOT supporting the Grand Alliance).

Oravil Barregos & his compatriots are definitely trying to counteract the ills of the Solarian League, at least for the Maya Sector.

Erls wrote:2a - The GA has found that Darius/The Twins/etc is located somewhere near the Maya Sector, and knowing what the sector's plans are wants to make them aware of what is happening. As well as inform Barregos that Givens happened to have caught a ride with a SD(P) division with some Sag-Cs and a CLAC as support as a tag-a-long group to a GA battle fleet heading to take out whatever MAlign base they found.

The wormhole in Torch connects to The Twins, and personally I find it hard to believe that that hyper-physicist they got out knows nothing about them, such as them existing.

Hmm. Here's the quote from Torch of Freedom Chapter 50:

'No one had ever encountered anything like it before, and even all these years after its discovery, the Mesan Alignment's hyper-physicists were still trying to come up with an explanation for how the "SGC-902-36-G Wormhole Anomaly" (also known as "The Twins ") had happened when all generally accepted wormhole theory said it couldn't have. There were currently, Trajan had been told, at least six competing "main" hypotheses.'

There's also this from Chapter 5:

'"Oh, I'm not talking about any hardware surprises, if that's what you're thinking," Zachariah assured him. "As far as I know, the Manties didn't trot out a single new gadget this time around. Which, much as I hate to admit it"—he smiled a bit sourly—"actually came as a pleasant surprise, for a change." He shook his head. "No, what bothers me is the fact that Manticore and Haven are cooperating on anything. The fact that they managed to get the League on board with them, too, doesn't make me any happier, of course. But if anybody on the other side figures out the truth about the Verdant Vista wormhole...'

Putting that together and that *does* sound quite a lot as if the SGC-902-36-G Wormhole Anomaly is notorious among alignment hyper-physicists and has been for quite a while. And at least some of them (Zachariah) know where it is too. I would absolutely expect Herlander Simoes to at least know of its existence.

The wormhole in Torch connects to The Twins, and personally I find it hard to believe that that hyper-physicist they got out knows nothing about them, such as them existing.

Hmm. Here's the quote from Torch of Freedom Chapter 50:

'No one had ever encountered anything like it before, and even all these years after its discovery, the Mesan Alignment's hyper-physicists were still trying to come up with an explanation for how the "SGC-902-36-G Wormhole Anomaly" (also known as "The Twins ") had happened when all generally accepted wormhole theory said it couldn't have. There were currently, Trajan had been told, at least six competing "main" hypotheses.'

There's also this from Chapter 5:

'"Oh, I'm not talking about any hardware surprises, if that's what you're thinking," Zachariah assured him. "As far as I know, the Manties didn't trot out a single new gadget this time around. Which, much as I hate to admit it"—he smiled a bit sourly—"actually came as a pleasant surprise, for a change." He shook his head. "No, what bothers me is the fact that Manticore and Haven are cooperating on anything. The fact that they managed to get the League on board with them, too, doesn't make me any happier, of course. But if anybody on the other side figures out the truth about the Verdant Vista wormhole...'

Putting that together and that *does* sound quite a lot as if the SGC-902-36-G Wormhole Anomaly is notorious among alignment hyper-physicists and has been for quite a while. And at least some of them (Zachariah) know where it is too. I would absolutely expect Herlander Simoes to at least know of its existence.

Nope. Herlander was never cleared for that info because he had no Need To Know. He was employed working on the streak drive, not on anything to do with astrogation and/or warp termini.) Remember when Albrecht and Collin are discussing his defection? One of them --- Collin, I think --- points out that he was never briefed in on the fact that Darius even existed, and if he didn't know that, he for darned sure didn't know anything about any classified worm holes!

Now, quite a few people inside the onion have undoubtedly figured out that there must be something like Darius out there, and the GA has for damned sure figured it out after Oyster Bay. But there's a huge difference between deducing that something "must" exist and actually demonstrating it's existence . . . especially to a skeptical Solarian League.

runsforcelery wrote:Nope. Herlander was never cleared for that info because he had no Need To Know. He was employed working on the streak drive, not on anything to do with astrogation and/or warp termini.) Remember when Albrecht and Collin are discussing his defection? One of them --- Collin, I think --- points out that he was never briefed in on the fact that Darius even existed, and if he didn't know that, he for darned sure didn't know anything about any classified worm holes!

Now, quite a few people inside the onion have undoubtedly figured out that there must be something like Darius out there, and the GA has for damned sure figured it out after Oyster Bay. But there's a huge difference between deducing that something "must" exist and actually demonstrating it's existence . . . especially to a skeptical Solarian League.

Oh, that's huge. I assumed he knew of the twins, he just didn't know that it was important.

'No one had ever encountered anything like it before, and even all these years after its discovery, the Mesan Alignment's hyper-physicists were still trying to come up with an explanation for how the "SGC-902-36-G Wormhole Anomaly" (also known as "The Twins ") had happened when all generally accepted wormhole theory said it couldn't have. There were currently, Trajan had been told, at least six competing "main" hypotheses.'

I am probably wrong but I seem to remember a passage in one of the books that hypothesized that the twins came about as a result of stellar drift of a wormhole bridge taking it too near a star thus causing it to split into 2 separate bridges with one terminus of each bridge in close proximity to the other.

Of course if it was mentioned at all it could also have been the description of another pair of termini in proximity to each other.

.T&RGJS

A man should live forever, or die in the attemptSpider Robinson Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) A voice is heard in Ramah

runsforcelery wrote:Nope. Herlander was never cleared for that info because he had no Need To Know. He was employed working on the streak drive, not on anything to do with astrogation and/or warp termini.) Remember when Albrecht and Collin are discussing his defection? One of them --- Collin, I think --- points out that he was never briefed in on the fact that Darius even existed, and if he didn't know that, he for darned sure didn't know anything about any classified worm holes!

That's interesting. I was expecting the basic knowledge about gravitics and hyperspace anomalies gained from The Twins to be one of the factors leading to the invention of the streak drive and spider drive. Apparently they are unrelated.

Now I'm left in a position where I'm puzzled as to the narrative significance of The Twins. Sure, a backdoor into the Haven Quadrant is important, but it would be equally important if there were a wormhole directly from Felix to Torch without going through SGC-902-36-G at all. Why introduce the anomaly at all? Isn't this just basically a two-stage wormhole bridge?

This might be a Read And Find Out situation, but if wiser heads than mine can shed any light on why The Twins are more interesting than Darius, based on what we know already, I'd be interested.

'No one had ever encountered anything like it before, and even all these years after its discovery, the Mesan Alignment's hyper-physicists were still trying to come up with an explanation for how the "SGC-902-36-G Wormhole Anomaly" (also known as "The Twins ") had happened when all generally accepted wormhole theory said it couldn't have. There were currently, Trajan had been told, at least six competing "main" hypotheses.'

I am probably wrong but I seem to remember a passage in one of the books that hypothesized that the twins came about as a result of stellar drift of a wormhole bridge taking it too near a star thus causing it to split into 2 separate bridges with one terminus of each bridge in close proximity to the other.

Of course if it was mentioned at all it could also have been the description of another pair of termini in proximity to each other.

No, that was a theory by one of the members of the forums here, SWM. I don't know if he's still around, haven't seen any posts of his for a while.

-------------------------------------------------------------History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.

runsforcelery wrote:Nope. Herlander was never cleared for that info because he had no Need To Know. He was employed working on the streak drive, not on anything to do with astrogation and/or warp termini.) Remember when Albrecht and Collin are discussing his defection? One of them --- Collin, I think --- points out that he was never briefed in on the fact that Darius even existed, and if he didn't know that, he for darned sure didn't know anything about any classified worm holes!

That's interesting. I was expecting the basic knowledge about gravitics and hyperspace anomalies gained from The Twins to be one of the factors leading to the invention of the streak drive and spider drive. Apparently they are unrelated.

Now I'm left in a position where I'm puzzled as to the narrative significance of The Twins. Sure, a backdoor into the Haven Quadrant is important, but it would be equally important if there were a wormhole directly from Felix to Torch without going through SGC-902-36-G at all. Why introduce the anomaly at all? Isn't this just basically a two-stage wormhole bridge?

This might be a Read And Find Out situation, but if wiser heads than mine can shed any light on why The Twins are more interesting than Darius, based on what we know already, I'd be interested.

I presume it was invented as a cutout.

Crown of Slaves, Chapter 18 wrote:"—we can see the whole thing. Through hyper-space, Congo's not more than three days travel from Erewhon. And now it's been discovered that Congo's system has a wormhole junction with no fewer than three termini. Since the wormhole was first found by Mesan interests only a short while ago, the presumption is that at least one of them connects to the Solarian League. But nobody really knows where its termini lead to, except the Mesans." He wiggled one of the knives to indicate that its actual line of connection was uncertain.

Now, I seem to remember someone, possibly one of the Detweillers, saying that this piece of bad information was deliberately leaked, possibly to affect the situation with Erewhon, or possibly for the situation that Terehkov wrecked in Service of the Sword. The thing is, though, there's no reason to leak the idea that there's a major junction there any more than that there's a single wormhole there. Either one would have the same effect on the Erehwonese. The actual situation is given in Chapter 50 of Torch of Freedom. My suspicion is that the astrographics were adjusted between the two books in service of further plot development.

runsforcelery wrote:Nope. Herlander was never cleared for that info because he had no Need To Know. He was employed working on the streak drive, not on anything to do with astrogation and/or warp termini.) Remember when Albrecht and Collin are discussing his defection? One of them --- Collin, I think --- points out that he was never briefed in on the fact that Darius even existed, and if he didn't know that, he for darned sure didn't know anything about any classified worm holes!

Now, quite a few people inside the onion have undoubtedly figured out that there must be something like Darius out there, and the GA has for damned sure figured it out after Oyster Bay. But there's a huge difference between deducing that something "must" exist and actually demonstrating it's existence . . . especially to a skeptical Solarian League.

Not being informed about Darius doesn't mean he could never told about The Twins, it should be possible to completely black box the two (And it's the sort of thing I can see the MA doing, there's no reason for scientists working on the problem to see anything except grav data on The Twins), or even have heard about them from someone working on them, just idle office chat.

Which means something interesting, research into The Twins and the Spider was NOT being done at the Gamma Center, nor was any other possibly hyper related research.